Yulia Tymoshenko at the beginning of her court hearing in Kyiv on June 24, 2011.

Serhiy Vlasenko, lawyer of the imprisoned former prime minister and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, speaking today at a news conference in Kharkiv, reading out Tymoshenko's statement about her decision to launch a hunger strike in protest against alleged vote-rigging in yesterday's election.

"If I were with you now and had an opportunity to act freely I would without doubt call on you to stage an indefinite civil disobedience action and we together would show these forgers their place as we've done many times in the past. But now, being behind bars, I cannot call on you to come out to the square because I cannot guarantee that such gatherings will be peaceful and well-organized so I do all I can do under such circumstances -- I declare hunger strike to protest against fake elections and illegitimate parliament."

18:1129.10.2012

Martin Schulz

Marcin Grajewski, spokesperson for the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, tells RFE/RL:

"He (European Parliament President Martin Schulz) regrets many shortcomings in the ballot. In particular, he is concerned by the lack of a level playing field among political forces caused, among other reasons, by an abuse of administrative resources. He also noted that campaign and party financing lacked transparency. Also, media coverage was tilted in favor of the ruling party and (the) continued imprisonment of government opposition activists castes a show over the election campaign."

Traditionally, many of those running nominally as independents in the single-mandate districts end up supporting the ruling party. Those districts were abandoned after the 2004 Orange Revolution -- but reinstated with legislation initiated by the Party of Regions in 2011.

And as Elena Gnedina, an analyst with a London-based risk consultancy, explains, this gives the ruling party an advantage.

"There will be 225 deputies elected [in single-mandate districts, many of them] as independents, and many are afraid these people will join with the Party of Regions and the Communist Party and build a strong faction in the parliament. This is quite possible and this has happened before in Ukraine. In the 1998 and 2002 elections that is what decidedly happened," Gnedina says.

16:0229.10.2012

Yulia Tymoshenko has announced that she is going on hunger strike to protest election results that she calls "rigged." [story in Ukrainian]